Many real world systems require searching information at very high speed; hence hardware based approaches are often employed. An increasingly common example, and the one which will primarily be used herein, is searching in network systems. In information searching there are basically two types of information searching: exact match and partial match searching. The present invention is intended to solve problems in exact match searching. Two approaches widely used today for exact match searching are hash-based searching and content addressable memory or CAM-based searching.
To compare these two types, for instance, one can consider the problem of designing and searching a database that can support one million entries of 128-bit input data and 32-bit of associated data.
In a hash based search, the concept is to map the search data, which is often very lengthy as in this 128-bit example, to numbers which are often much smaller, say only 20-bits in length, since only 20 bits are needed to address one million entries. Since this conversion (128-bit to 20-bit) is not a one-to-one mapping, collisions will very likely occur. That is, a hash collision is said to have occurred here when the hash function employed returns the same 20-bit result for two different 128-bit inputs.
Furthermore, depending on the particular data encountered and the particular hash function employed, more than just two different 128-bit inputs can be mapped to the same 20-bit result number. It therefore is not uncommon for a system to have to be designed to accommodate the fact that three, four or even more different inputs will be mapped by the hash function to the very same output number. There are many different approaches to reducing the impact of hash collisions. One approach is to increase the database size. For instance, consider first the degenerate case, a “1-way-set-associative hash.” Here the 128-bit input search values are mapped to 20-bit values used as address indexes into a memory. The memory needs to be 1M in size, since each 20-bit value needs to map to an actual memory location. This case, of course, does not handle any hash collisions at all. It simply ignores them, and therefore is not very practical. Consider next a “2-way-set-associative hash.” Here one set of collisions can be handled. The memory needs to be 2M in size, since each 20-bit value needs to map to two actual memory locations. Higher-way associative hashes can also be used, but beyond a “4-way-set-associative hash” this approach of simply increasing the database size is typically not practical. Based on the parameters used here, in a 4-way case the memory would need to be 4M in size and would be very poorly utilized.
FIG. 1 (background art) is a block diagram depicting a search engine 10 using conventional hash-based database searching. A controller 12 includes a hash function 14 which can receive 128-bit input search values and generate 20-bit hash value which is used as an index to address a memory 16.
If we assume that hash collisions will not happen too often, and use only a 2-way-set-associative hash, the memory 16 needs to be able to store a database having two million entries. This is depicted here as a base region 16a and a conflicts region 16b in the memory 16, a total of two regions for a 2-way-set-associative hash. A 21-bit wide address bus 18 is therefore needed to communicate between the controller 12 and the memory 16 (20-bits to address the first one million entries in the base region 16a, and one additional bit to address the second million entries, in the conflicts region 16b used to support the one set of potential collision cases). The entries in the memory 16 each require 160 bits, 32 bits for an associate value which is the desired result of the search and 128 bits for the input search value which is intended to produce that particular result.
The above illustrates a key point in hash-based database searching—both the associate content value and a stored instance of the search value which produces it must be stored in the memory 16 and returned to the controller 12, here via a 160-bit result bus 20, for the controller 12 to perform a comparison to determine if a hash collision has occurred. The controller 12 can only do this if it has both the input and stored search values. If these are the same in a search result obtained from the base region 16a, the associate value in the search result is valid and the controller 12 can carry on with using it. If these values are different, however, a hash collision has occurred. Then the controller 12 accesses the memory 16 a second time, using the 21st bit to address an entry stored in the conflicts region 16b. If the input and stored search values are now the same, the controller 12 can again carry on. If these are still different, however, another hash collision has occurred and using only a 2-way-set-associative hash and a two million entry database is not adequate for the task at hand.
A good hash algorithm is one that produces very few collisions. However, it usually cannot be known how many collisions will actually occur, because the pattern of the input search data is typically not known in advance. If there is more than one collision for a given number, a 2-way-set-associative hash will not be able to handle it. In order to support the database with more confidence, 4-way or more set-associative approach should then be used. When such is used, more memory must be provided.
The size of the memory depends on two things: the number of entries being supported and the number of ways of set-associativity employed. For example, to support n entries using 4-way-set-associativity, the memory size has to have 4n entries. For one million entries this means that the memory must be four million entries “deep,” even though only one million of entries will ever potentially be used, i.e., less than 25% of the memory is utilized.
The number of ways of set-associativity also dictates that more clock cycles will potentially be needed for a search. As noted for the 2-way associative hash in FIG. 1, it will take a maximum of two memory read operations (instead of one) to perform a database search, since one collision may happen during the search. Similarly, for an m-way set-associativity it may take up to m memory read operations to perform a database search.
It follows that hash-based database searching has substantial disadvantages when one considers the large amount of memory needed and the limited speed of searching possible. For discussion, these can be termed the memory size issue and the search speed issue, and both increase linearly when hash-based searching is used. The memory size issue is largely a matter of cost, and thus may be easily solved if cost is not a serious problem. The search speed issue is more difficult, however, and it may make hash-based searching impractical in many applications.
FIG. 2 (background art) is a basic block diagram depicting a search engine 50 using conventional CAM-based database searching. Here a controller 52 provides a 128-bit input search value to a CAM 54 that will search its own database (of one million entries) and provide a 20-bit index value to a memory 56, where up to one million 32-bit associate content values may be stored.
Although other types of memory can theoretically be used in place of the CAM 54, content addressable memory, or associative memory as it is also widely known, is particularly useful. When provided an input search value, a content addressable memory will very rapidly provide as its output the address within it of any match (multiple matches should not occur here unless the CAM 54 is improperly programmed). This index, perhaps with appropriate translation by a suitable logic circuit, can then be used as an address into the memory 56.
The controller 52 here provides the input search value to the CAM 54 via a 128-bit wide search data bus 58; the CAM 54 provides the address index value to the memory 56 via a 20-bit wide address bus 60, and the memory 56 provides the search result to the controller 52 via a 32-bit wide result bus 62. Since the CAM 54 always provides, if anything, a unique address in the memory 56, only one read operation is required.
TABLE 1 summarizes, along with aspects of the present invention which are discussed presently, the differences between the prior art hash-based and CAM-based approaches when the controllers 12, 52 are ASIC devices and the memories 16, 56 are RAM. From this a number of respective advantages and disadvantages for these approaches become readily apparent. For instance, the hash-based approach has lower cost and power consumption. The CAM-based approach provides a lower pin count at the ASIC (which is highly desirable), uses less memory (overall), never encounters collisions (no dependency is necessary on the nature of the input data values or on the choice of an algorithm), and has a potentially higher search speed (one which is consistent and known). There are still other advantages and disadvantages, but these are the typical major ones.
Accordingly, it is desirable to find hardware-based approaches of database searching which do not suffer from the respective disadvantages of the conventional hash-based and CAM-based approaches, and which retain or provide additional advantages for these prior art approaches.